For the Free Software Foundation Europe and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), 2010 looks like a decisive year given that several interesting decisions will be taken on the patentabilty of software, business processes and conventional seeds. Four questions about computer implemented inventions and their patenting have been referred by Brimelow to the EPO Enlarged Board of Appeal and a decision can be expected soon, even if the referral itself is rejected.

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The free and open source software model might be a better alternative to patenting and then “repairing” possible barriers to technology transfers, said Karsten Gerloff, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe. It might be possible to transfer this model to other technology areas like climate technology, he said. In any case, information technology related climate technology would gain through free and open source software.

The FSFE, according to Gerloff, will follow closely the work by the EU Commission on the European Interoperability Framework (EIF), which consists of a set of interoperability guideline documents for European Public Services. While the first draft resulting from consultations in 2008 contained solid references to open standards and open source software, according to the FSFE, these had vanished from a second draft leaked last September. Six member states filed objections against this second EIF draft, according to the FSFE.

Ignoring open standards and open source software has a series of disadvantages, according to the free and open source software organisations, from anti-competitive effects against smaller software companies to proprietary formats for public content.

A second focus of the FSFE’s work in 2010 is the relationship between standards and patents. “In our view, patents that are part of standards have to be licensed royalty free,” said Gerloff. While standardisation bodies like the World Wide Web Consortium or the Internet Engineering Task Force this worked well, in other organisations like the International Standards Organisation, reform is necessary, he said. “There is a lot of work to do.”

The European Patent Office is considering whether to redefine the criteria for patenting software inventions.

This new article titled “Maximizing protection for software innovations” also requires subscription:

Software innovators can better protect their intellectual property by drafting patent claims with an eye toward how those claims may actually be interpreted in litigation.

Europe’s policy on software patents is always under pressure to change, courtesy of Microsoft and Microsoft allies like SAP (although there are other batsmen for software patents whose interests are not directly tied to Microsoft). The president of the FFII says that “SAP is lobbying the European Commission for UPLS/EUEPLA” (the unified system that can bring software patents) and experience suggests that SAP has always been rather hostile towards Free software [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Despite all this — and rather surprisingly in fact — Matthew Aslett from the 451 Group chose SAP as a “case study for open source engagement” just a couple of days ago. He received a statement from SAP:

Of course some issues remain. On a related issue, one of the most significant for free and open source advocates is the company’s attitude towards software patents. A good explanation as to why this is the case is provided by Glyn Moody.

I asked Claus and Erwin for their perspective on SAP’s stance on software patents and how that impacted the perception of SAP. Part of the response was the expected position that as SAP exists in a world where there are software patents it has no choice but to engage in patenting software itself if it is to retain a strong position against competitors. The other, with specific reference to open source, was as follows:

“SAP actually is a big proponent of strong and concise IPR licensing regimes for all standards and open source initiatives we participate in. Whatever claims of patents and patent applications that essentially need to be infringed to implement a standard or use an open source component should always be licensed in a reasonable and non-discriminatory manner by the individuals and organizations that have contributed to the project (obviously, in open source projects RAND means royalty-free). SAP does participate in open source projects particularly in order to drive adoption of a certain technology. There may be SAP patents in that very domain and they may be essential, but we require ourselves to freely license those patents to everybody. But we expect the same from any other project participant. And that’s actually why we prefer governance models like the one from the Eclipse Foundation (that also comprises contribution analyses in order to minimize unintentional copyright infringements).”

Suffice to say, this is just PR/spin. SAP’s actions have spoken for themselves for many years, ever since SAP’s Shai Agassi went about with his offensive rhetorics against Free software. It’s like they had their own little Steve Ballmer (before he left to do something ethical). Glyn Moody has already responded to the post from Aslett and he fills in some gaps.

Readers with a taste for high comedy may remember my post “Why SAP is Such a Sap over Software Patents”, which rather took to task a certain large German software company over its stance on software patents. Now, to be fair, SAP has done some good things for free software – not many, but some – and Matthew Aslett has produced an excellent summary of these on his 451 CAOS Theory blog, which I urge you to read.

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The other problem is the reference to RAND. As the quotation notes, RAND for open source projects means royalty-free – but not for traditional software companies. In that case, RAND means a “reasonable” licence fee – which may be small, but is, as SAP must know, completely incompatible with free software licences like the GNU GPL.

Over in Europe, SAP is considered one of the worst offenders when it comes to attempting to illegalise Free software (using software patents). So again, it’s funny to see this company listed as “case study for open source engagement”. An “open source divorce” would be a better case study matching SAP.

In the legal affairs committee JURI in the European Parliament, we have been discussing an initiative by the EU Commission to set up an ”IP Observatory” that should monitor and combat all kinds of intellectual property infringements, from commercial goods counterfeiting to kids downloading films and music. Right now, we are in the process of drafting a resolution, known as the Gallo report, on the subject.

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So much for the involvement of the European Parliament on this issue. We have been invited to hold an exchange of views in the JURI committee, and we are currently spending time on drafting a resolution on if and how the IP Observatory should be set up.

These lawyers are interfering with law that is fairly reasonable. Who is running this system anyway? In reference to it, says TechDirt, “Government for the people?”

The Computer & Communications Industry Association is launching its new intellectual property blog today to serve as a forum for tech policy discussions. With the Obama appointees now in place and Congress looking for ways to help the economy grow, CCIA is optimistic about seeing patent reform this year.

“As we talk about developing an innovation agenda to boost our economic recovery, patent reform and balanced copyright rules should be part of that discussion,” said CCIA President & CEO Ed Black. “Current patent policies favor some business models over others, but after years of discussion it’s time for this Congress to recognize what consensus there is and lead the country toward reforms that would create the most innovation and jobs — and ideally allow for the next generation of innovation.”

“The IETF came under criticism from the FSF last year after it had allowed patents inside standards.”Well, either way, there are also some important developments outside of Europe. Here, for instance, is an update on the notorious VoIP patent which the EFF is challenging.

Free software can simply ignore software patents in the large majority of the world and moreover, as the president of the FFII puts it by quoting, “Torvalds is the fellow who advised his people not to read patents, setting the public disclosure of patents on its head.”

Microsoft is the same. It made it a policy to discourage staff from reading patents (so as to avoid infringements being willful).

2 Comments

Of course, it is more that Torvalds that realize the importance of not reading patents. First and foremost it is a waste of time which will cause you triple damages for your trouble. The time spent reading or researching patents is much better spent either trying to roll back the US law to a more sensible, earlier version without software patents and/or ensuring that in Europe the 1974 European Patent Convention is recognized even by Bliar and Berlusconi.

It’s stupid to have the same talking point come up again and again to have to waste resources shooting the disinformation down.

What Else is New

Torvalds and others who are middle-aged (or older) males are often torpedoed using weakly-backed allegations (or insinuations/innuendo) of sexism; that does not seem to matter and won't matter when they treat men the same (or worse)

Linus Torvalds was not fully canceled; nor was Richard Stallman, who's still heading the GNU Project (under conditions specified by those looking to oust him; people who code for Microsoft GitHub and many IBM employees)

General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Board of Red Hat, explains (keynote in 2011 Red Hat Summit/JBoss World) that he was introduced to the system as part of a military campaign; it basically helped war, not antiwar

Techrights examines Red Hat’s (IBM’s) hypocritical claims about the Free Software Foundation, founded by Richard Stallman back when IBM was the “big scary monopolist”; IBM employees were prominent among those pushing to oust Stallman from the GNU Project, which he founded, as well

The (in)famous letter against Richard Stallman (RMS), which was signed by many Red Hat employees with Microsoft (GitHub) accounts, doesn’t look particularly good in light of recent revelations/findings; it increasingly looks like IBM simply wants Microsoft-hosted and “permissively” licensed stuff, just like another project it announced yesterday and another that it promoted yesterday

One might not expect this from a so-called 'charity'; the Gates Foundation's critics are often met with unprecedented aggression, threats and retribution, which make one wonder if it's really a charity or a greedy cult of personalities (Bill and Melinda)

The assault on the media by Bill Gates is a subject not often explored by the media (maybe because a lot of it is already bribed by him); but we're beginning to gather new and important evidence that explains how critics are muzzled (even fired) and critical pieces spiked, never to see the light of day anywhere

Microsoft buying GitHub does not demonstrate that Microsoft loves Open Source (GitHub is not Open Source and may never be) but that it loves monopoly and coercion (what GitHub is all about and why it must be rejected)

The European Patent Office (EPO) keeps granting fake patents that cause a lot of real harm (examiners are pressured to play along and participate in this unlawful agenda); nobody is happy except those who profit from needless, frivolous lawsuits

After contributing to the cancellation of Richard Stallman (RMS) based on some falsehoods perpetuated in the media we're seeing the sort of thing one might expect from IBM (more so now that it totally controls Fedora and RHEL)

The coup to remove (or remove power from) Stallman and Torvalds, the GNU and Linux founders respectively, is followed by outsourcing of their work to Microsoft’s newly-acquired monopoly (GitHub) and appointment of Microsoft workers or Microsoft-friendly people, shoehorning them into top roles under the disingenuous guise of "professionalism"